Notice of Thread/Post Moderation
A place where moderators describe action

At the very least, there should be a thread which shows all major moderating decisions. The way things are is really too much.

This thread was being created in response to the above suggestion and is to provide a place where moderators can notify the community when a thread has been heavily edited or deleted, and reasons for such actions (reasons maybe a little cryptic as we will not say a thread was deleted because it insulted a specific player -- at least not by name).

Also, don't expect to see a discussion of here when individual post are edited to remove a players name or to stike out some random profanity. Usually there will be a comment in the edited post when that happens and that should be sufficient.

The Poll started by Justin entitled "Is this a personal attack" has been restored with some minor edits, and with five post in the orginal thread deleted. I am not sure where the poll was originally, but it has been restored to the "General BBO Discussion" forum. This WAS the deleted thread that started the moderation discussion that lead to the creation of this pinned topic.

I did the edits and the deletions. Where stuff was edited out, it was explained why at least in general (with one exception which was not discussed). The deleted post were either related to a joke that was mistaken as an attack (and the responses) or that mentioned a specific BBO member by name. All the edits were aimed at trying to prevent a further escalation of discussion of that specific BBF member by name.

A thread from interesting hands was deleted today by inquiry. It is ironic that the first thread noted here for being deleted was started by inquiry: it was the identical hand I posted in that forum some time ago.

Two days ago (I think), two moderators discussed a new thread started about a very nice collection of bridge books for sale on ebay. This was the second thread on the very same topic. Our discussion was over

1) Did we want to allow commercial post in this forum (ie, both threads)
2) If we allowed this type of commercial post, did we want to allow multiple threads

We did not come to a conclusion on the first point, but the decision was that one thread was sufficient. We did not delete either thread, but we did merge them into a single thread. No content was deleted.

Two post, both entitled regedit, were deleted by one of the adminstrators (not sure which). Neither had a place in the forum. I have, at least temporarily, blocked the posting by the user name who posted them.

Deleted one post in the thread entitled "Two Way Doubles". The post was an attempt at humor based upon the first two words of the title (with nothing else in the post). I know for a fact that at least two people found the attempt at humor offensive because they pressed the report to adminstrator button and told me so. The post was deleted rather than edited because nothing else was in it.

A post was deleted from the "General BBO Discussion" because it was posted twice (word for word identical).... once there is once in "Suggestion for software" forumt. The actual post, "Convention cards function needs to be fixed!, Convention cards function needs to be fixed" can still be read in the suggestion for software forum.

A post, which for lack of a better description, was soley aimed at publically accused a player of cheating was removed. Send all cheating issues privately to abuse or to me, or to anyone of the yellows.

We take cheating very seriously in games that award bbo rating points. However, public accusation of cheating are not allowed.

(edit: ui).
Public accusations of cheating (on bbo properties ) are not tolerated. No exceptions.

It is worth noting that i got not one, but 11 "report this post to moderator" messages about that one. The usual comments ran along the lines of.....

one real message to me said:

looks like a sleazy attempt to post commercial SPAM in the forum

We have been pretty good about blocking these type of messages because to signup for this site to post, you have to register on the gaming site. This person did register there (as a footnote, he has played a few hands there as well).

Thanks for alerting me.... The poster's posting rights have been removed for the time being.

A thread about "idgets" and the need to have different level rooms has been removed, by me, at least temporarily. Other administrative action was also taken. The thread might come back heavily edited with a number of post totally removed, in that uday had a very nice post in that thread. I repeat Uday's comments below just in case the thread doesn't make it back....

Uday's response in that thread said:

"you gotta make some rooms where people of the same level can play together"

The problem is that people won't play there. Many newbies think they're advanced, many advancing players think they're experts, and not a few players think they're (undiscovered except by mom) world class.

It is true that some sort of answer would be good. it is a complex problem.

The thread mentioned in the previous post by me has been returned to this forum (not sure where it was initially) with 8 individual post by a number of different members removed from the thread. No editing of individual post occured... a post was either deleted or left alone.